Family claims to have found dead rat in bottle of Dr. Pepper

…and none of us will ever drink soda again.

Kayden Graves, q 3-year-old from Katy Texas, drank from the bottle after his grandfather, John, bought it for him. Kayden only drank a little, put the cap back on, and set the bottle down. The next day, John Graves found the rodent.

“This morning when they opened it they found something floating in there,” Graves told KPRC 2. “Pretty good size. About 3 inches long with a big tail.”

“You think it’s rabies. You think of dirty, filthy rodents. What did he ingest?” he said.

The family took Kayden in to the doctor for tests and now want answers from Dr. Pepper – who issued the following statement:

“Nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of our consumers. We take all consumer complaints very seriously, are very concerned about the call we received today from Mr. Graves and are investigating it as best as we can.

“What we know from our experience is that given the controls and safeguards we have in our production facilities it is virtually impossible for any foreign object to enter any container during the bottling process. All of our containers enter our facility on pallets in our warehouse and remain covered until the moment they are placed on our high-speed filling lines. Once on the filling lines, they are inverted and rinsed out before they are filled and capped.

“We have offered to dispatch a courier to pick up the product to take it out for testing by a third party forensics laboratory, but the consumer has declined this request. This lab would be able to analyze any rodent that got into the product, determine how it entered the container and even inspect the contents of its stomach. This process can take 6-8 weeks to yield conclusive findings. Until we have the opportunity to review the contents, we don’t have a way to do a full investigation.”

A third party?  Couldn’t Dr. Pepper find out themselves?  They are a doctor after all.